Hyperborea Dev Diary #1 Using Regions to Make Connected Maps in RPGMaker

Greetings I have begun work on Hyperborea: The Frozen North in earnest now. I wanted to explain a little tutorial to aspiring developers regarding how to make “seamless” transitions between maps in RPGMakerMV. This technique works best if you have maps with large borders. Hyperborea, for the most part, is a barren and open environment. This, of course, lends itself to a maps with borders around 100 tiles. Doing this manually is a drag and if you make one mistake, R.I.P. Below are the steps that I took to ameliorate this issue.

Using the Map Paint tool, go to the “R” tab and select a region that you have not used. You only need to draw a region line one tile thick, however since I was counting tiles, I used the rectangle tool to draw large rectangles instead.

2) Setting the Common Event

The next step is setting up the Common Event. In this system, you will need a Common Event for every region that you traverse. Below are two examples of code. The first one is one that takes the player south. The second one, in text, takes the player west.

YHyperborea: Determines where the player will spawn on the Y axis. This iteration is based on their position. Since the player is traveling from the East to the West in the text commands above, YHyperborea is variable.

XHyperborea: Determines where the player will spawn on the Y axis. This iteration is static.

MapID, this is an indicator of which map they are traveling to. It is a number obtainable from the bottom of the screen when working on a map.

To obtain some of the variables like Map X or Map Y of player, you can click on Game Data and select the character option.

3) Adding the Event to Yanfly Region Events

Perhaps the simplest thing in this is tieing the region to the event. Open the plugin manager, select YEP_RegionEvents, select the region that you have painted, and choose the custom event! Voila! You should be set to go. Making region transitions “seamless” however, is another step that requires a bit of tinkering. It largely depends on how you have set your screen resolution. You will have to set the region markers a certain distance away from the borders of the map so that the player has the illusion that they are always in the center.